Capsule Monsters
by Bardicsidhe
Summary: [Honda x Otogi] Honda and Otogi accidentally discover a Capmon board of Johji's, and of course, a game must ensue.


**Capsule Monsters**

**Used for reference:** NoA Arc American Dub, Volume 3 and 4 of condensed manga.

**Summary:** Capsule Monsters, or Capmon, was introduced only briefly in volume 3 of the condensed version of the comic, during the storyline introducing Mokuba Kaiba. In volume 4, Johji, Honda's nephew, is introduced. And so we have Honda accidentally discovering a Capmon board of his nephew's, and of course, a game must ensue.

**Rating: PG-13 eventual vague adult situation and language.**

_Roses are red, violets are blue. I no own, so you no sue._

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Ryuuji huffed impatiently and flipped the channel. Honestly, the kind of cable programming in this area was hideous. The choices ranged from a pseudo-reality dating game to yet another talk show about paternity tests. _Did you have drunken anonymous sex, but now your child is destined to be a musical superstar? Next on…_

Pathetic.

He leaned back into the couch, twiddling a few hairs that escaped from his ponytail, and flipped the channel. American national poker championships. Now _this _was something he could get into.

"Stay tuned for a word from our sponsors…"

While a tennis champion peddled body lotion onscreen, a series of loud crashes from the hall jerked Ryuuji Otogi's head around. He was in his best friend Hiroto Honda's parent's living room, and until a few minutes ago, had been watching dirt bike races with him and plotting to pool their money and buy a machine for themselves. Honda disappeared to dig in his closet for the small black metal safe where he'd squirreled away odds and ends from mowing yards, washing cars, trimming hedges and his current part time job sorting mail at the post office. He hadn't reappeared.

"Honda? Yo, Honda!" Ryuuji called, bouncing out of his chair to race back to the other boy's bedroom. He found the brunette sitting on the floor outside of his closet, and looking rather dazed. An assortment of baby toys, dog-eared scrapbooks and shoeboxes of paper lay around him in heaps. A few stray sheets fluttered down around his head like the feathers of an origami crane.

"Are you all right?" The ponytailed teenager blurted before he could help himself.

"Yeah, genius. I just got conked on the head by a pile of my stupid nephew's crap. I'm fine." Came the immediate sarcastic reply.

"You don't have to be a jerk," Ryuuji sniffed and shifted his weight to the other foot, not realizing that he'd put his fist on the opposite hip in the position that Honda referred to as '_so_ gay,' until he caught the brunette snickering. Straightening abruptly, he glared, spun on his heel, and started back down the hallway to the living room. "You're fine. I'm going home."

"No, wait! I'm sorry! Ryuuji!" Honda scrambled to get out of the heap of debris, and only succeeded in shaking another box loose from the already dangerously overloaded shelves. He was pelted by a hail of small white egg-shaped capsules. And then the box. And then a plastic (and _pointy_) game board that was hidden underneath the box. There was of course the initial bellow, and then in the stunned silence that followed, a pale whimpered "owww…"

Concern for Honda won out over his irritation, and Ryuuji peeked back down the hall. He surveyed the damage. "What did you do, find your nephew's mothball collection?"

"I appreciate your sympathy."

Ryuuji knelt beside him. He stirred through the flotsam and fished out one of the capsules. "What _are _these things?"

"I don't know. They're probably some more of Johji's old toys. My sister spoils him like you wouldn't believe."

The egg in Ryuuji's hands was decorated with a bright red star and the number "4." He shook it tentatively, tapped it, and then after his fingernail caught in a seam around the flat bottom, he twisted the top. It popped off easily, revealing a tiny plastic figurine of a caped man with a ram's skull for a head.

"I think I remember those," Honda reached for it, and Ryuuji handed it over. "Yugi was into these things for a little while, before he and Jou started collecting Duel Monster cards." He examined it, handed it back when Ryuuji reached for it, and leaned on his hands in the midst of the mess.

"What was it, some kind of game?"

"Yeah, I think. It was like chess. Those little monster things had power levels and special abilities though." Curious now, Honda unearthed another one of the capsules and twisted off the top. A piglike animal with scales, spines, and a forked tail.

"Ugh, that one's even uglier than this one!" Ryuuji righted the box and sorted out a few handfuls of the capped figurines. "Geez, Johji has a _shitload _of these things."

"There were vending machines with the things in them, I think."

"Is this the game board?"

"Must be," Honda shrugged as Ryuuji pulled out the blue and white airbrushed plastic terrain. "Why are you so interested all of a sudden?"

"I don't know, it looks interesting." It made better entertainment than the television. "Want to play?"

"But we don't know how!"

"Since when has that ever been a problem?" Ryuuji smirked, and Honda snorted.

"I _did _know how to play Duel Monsters, all right? I saved Shizuka's butt _and _yours, didn't I?"

"Tch, says your ego. And it was _me _that saved everybody."

"Says the guy who let _me_ take the fall and end up as a robotic monkey."

"Hey, you were the one who threw yourself in harm's way. I could've come up with another way out."

Honda sighed inwardly. It was a sigh of exasperation. A _he'll never understand_ sigh. Ryuuji was just…Ryuuji. He's always been a 'me first' kind of person, and he probably always would be. He'd never do anything stupidly chivalrous or heroic in a blind panic. He'd never be the one to just leap off the garret and grab the…rhinosaur…by the horns.

His cool reserve was, in fact, irritating. But it was something Honda only had in fits and starts, and it wasn't worth fighting with his friend about. If there was another damning fault that Ryuuji was plagued by, it was the refusal to admit he was wrong.

"Never mind," He said, not noticing the heated exchange of stares until Ryuuji turned his face away, "we'll make it up as we go along. Let's play."

-------

"And then Headsucker, sexy beast that he is, seduces his way into the castle of your King Demon!"

"I don't know if 'Seduction' counts as a special ability."

"Believe me, boy," Ryuuji smirked, posturing provocatively even as he sat cross-legged on Honda's bed, "It's not just a special ability, it's a _gift_."

"Hmph."

"Anyway, we don't even know the names of these things. So who's to say what their special abilities are?"

"Well, with names like 'The Pillager,' 'Sex Pistils,' 'Heartbreaker,' and 'Don Juan the Haunted John,' I think I can pretty much _guess _what yours are."

"At least I have a sense of humor and some creativity. Honestly. '_Soul _Ripper'?

"What's wrong with 'Soul Ripper'?"

"Honda, it doesn't even have hands. It looks like a dick with feet."

"It has a nail, see?" Honda turned the offending figurine around so Ryuuji could see. "A nail and knuckles. It's not a dick with feet. It's a finger! What's so funny?" Heavy eyebrows lifted when Ryuuji suddenly did a double take and rolled off the bed in fits of hysterical laughter.

"Dick! You said 'dick with feet'!"

"You said it first!"

"I know, I know," Ryuuji hiccupped and lay on the floor, bare feet propped up on the edge of Honda's bed. "Call it 'Hangnail' or something, and I'll be happy." Honda frowned, picked up the monster and looked it over thoughtfully, then dropped it back on the board.

"I can't play with it _now_. It _does _look like a dick."

"You can't play with your—"

"Don't make me come down there."

Ryuuji wiped his nose and pulled himself back onto the mattress, and gave him a long look. Then he held out his hand. "Give it here."

"What? Why?" Honda demanded suspiciously.

Ryuuji put on an exasperated tone of voice. "Give me your dick, Honda. If you don't want to play with it, I _will_." At Honda's shocked expression, he sighed. "It's a level five monster, for crying out loud. Just because you won't play with it doesn't mean it has to go to waste."

"There's lots of level five monsters in the box still." Honda still hadn't quite recovered from the demand.

"Yeah, but a walking dick named 'Soul Ripper,'…? How often does _that _come around?" Suddenly, with a well-timed shove, Ryuuji sent the game board and its various pieces flying off the bed and into the pile of debris in front of the closet. Then he was staring hard at Honda, with only a foot or two of space between them. "Besides. I don't want to play with just any old—"

"_Shit_!" The exclamation had come from the press of a hand in a strategic area. In his grasp for anything stable as the ponytailed boy climbed on top of him, Honda scooted back against the headboard and yelped as his hip came in contact with something hard and pointed. He dug it out.

Soul Ripper.

Ryuuji snatched it out of his fingers and tossed it aside.

"—I want to play with _yours_."

_-Owari-_


End file.
